• Alienation = Marxist critique of domination / Q: Definition? Indications?

Relationship to Capitalism? Modernity? Implies the existence of – (Alienation) &

raises the question of that would look like?

• Societies, Institutions, Beliefs created to benefit the powerful few at the expense of
the powerless many through the construction of reality & ideologies of legitimacy =
reproduced in the routines of everyday life so that existing power structures seem
natural / right.

• Alienated selfhood + Alienated interaction = Where the routines of everyday life are
sustained by habit, fear, & anxiety.

• Marx = critique of labor relations under capitalism. Q: Is Alienation under

Capitalistic Modes of Production relevant to the POMO Technological World of
Information based services + mass marketed goods + mass mediated images?

• Q: Is alienation a function of society = does it belong to society or the individual?

What is its relation to the person, especially to the patterns of self-production and
interaction of everyday life?

• Marx = Alienation = Commodities produced by wage labor confront the worker as

alien objects that dominate/deform the worker’s selfhood & estrange him from
others (G M 108) + Workers = powerless = slaves.

• Capitalism = Changed? Evolved? From Coercion to (Complacency?) [Workers =

Accomplices]. Class division = less pronounced. – (Control) 19th Century Factories =
production of commodities = $$$ owners of [K] = today owners = shareholders.

• Cultural Marxists = domination shifted from economic determinism to the ‘culture

industry’ & patterns of mass consumption that shape consciousness/character to
secure $$$, sustain legitimacy, & mask the causes of modern malaise (Marcuse
1964).

• POMO = “hyper-real” society of unending simulations dominated by codes of

signification (Baudrillard 1968, 1975, 1983).

• Commodified Culture = own logic of simulation! Marx causality = ideological

reifications of the infrastructure no longer valid (Baudrilliard 1975).

• Meanings / Desires / Images = affective endowment = sign system.

• Proliferation of commodified images & spectacles of hyper-reality = more real than

real. Objects / Events / Images / Personalities = unending streams of simulacra =
new order of representation whose symbolic value needs demystification along the
lines of Marx’s critique of commodity fetishism (Baudrilliard 1983).

• Bureaucratically administered society of mass consumption = manipulation of

 desire / transformation of self / social interaction in everyday life (Lefebvre 1971).

• Marx = factory = site of alienation. Today (1980s / LL) = shopping mall (Kroker, et
al., 1989). < Today = Internet! Cyberspace! Virtual Reality! >

• Critique of Modern Alienation = deconstruction of interaction / selfhood in a society

of unending spectacles / carnivals / fast food / faster technogadgets / universalization
of consumption – society provides ersatz gratifications in a fragmented <
Decentered / POMO > world of everyday life = situated in consumption based
routines and lifestyles.

• Decentered selfhood <Real> = self-produced simulation of identity expressed in the

< Imagined / Created (Virtually) > routines and rituals of everyday life < Recreated /
Expressed (Online) > = < Centered Self (Online = Virtual Grand Narrative) > =
Intersection Individual / Group / Larger social order.